Friday, April 22, 2011

{not so} good friday or 'the earth day that fought back'

Today started off like most others, I settled in to check emails and the interwebs with my coffee and my kitties after a particularly bad dream about killers bees. Only Troycat has recently been all Lassie-likeand was being so today. (Last weekend he alerted me to the fact that Nomar had somehow been locked out on the balcony for the entirety of the morning. Oops.)

Now he whines all the time, so it's sometimes hard to differentiate the Lassie calls from the 'I am dying because I think I am starving' ones. This morning he'd jump on my lap, whine in my face and run over to the partially shaded screen doors. After about four times of him doing this I went over and pulled the shades entirely open to see if that would shut him up. If only I had brought my mug of coffee with me, for I surely would have dropped it in a lovely dramatic and cinematic slow motion way because...

Bees! All flying around my balcony. Just moving on in. Or maybe setting up Extinction Resistance Headquarters. All John Connor resistance style (it is Judgment Day after all... in Terminator mythology).

Now people, I have been stung by a bee exactly one time. When I was three. And when you are three, it is the most terrifying and malicious thing ever. I have spent the subsequent twenty-something years with a pretty hefty fear of being stung again. Mostly because it's been built up in my mind for decades. Today I saw the depths of this fear.

I immediately woke up James (far earlier than he should have to be woken up when he works until 3 AM) and started getting dramatic because they were clearly nesting in one of those rusty sprinkler things that we have on the ceiling of the balcony area. Completely forgoing the use of any common sense or knowledge I've ever acquired, I worried on about how spraying it would surely set off all the sprinklers in the entire building. Before James could even begin to comfort me, I was on the phone with my dad asking him what to do! Luckily my father is an engineer and has a technical way of explaining things that quelled some of my hysterics. 'Melina, they have to be under an intense amount of heat before going off. There's a part that melts and that triggers the sprinkler. Spraying it will be fine.'

So I dashed off to my room and threw on some clothes so we could set off in search of the most poisonous bee killing spray I could get my hands on (Happy Earth Day!!). James switched between rolling his eyes and chuckling at how ridiculous I was. 'It's not that bad, Melina,' he said walking over to the sliding door as I grabbed my purse to head out the front door. 'It's just a couple- oh...'

As he trailed off, my stomach dropped, possibly through the floor and into my neighbor's living room. 'What? What?! Why are you not talking??!'

'It's worse,' he whispered.

Why yes, my friends, that is a swarm of bees the size of a volleyball. Good guess!

What happened next I am not entirely proud of, but I do feel entirely justified. I may or may not have broken down a little bit (okay, I did). I may have started rambling on at break neck speed. James may have reminded me that there are Africanized Honey Bees in SoCal. I may have cried some more.

But it was like the first episode of Lost, where Jack tells Kate that you can give the fear ten full seconds and then that's it. Except, maybe I gave it ten full minutes. And maybe I wasn't all that brave after those ten full minutes. But people:

Justified.

The good news is:
-by the time we returned from the store the massive swarm had dissipated
-James and I put on a lot of protective winter jackets and poisoned that nest
-the swarm has yet to (and hopefully never will) return
-I have wine

The bad news:
-I have seen at least one bird fly off with a poisoned, dead bee (no doubt to her nest
of baby birds... Happy Earth Day!!)
-James has abandoned me to go to work
-Well and...

...that is burned into my retinas.

But then my mom sent me chocolate, Vogue and an Outback gift card for Easter. So today wasn't so bad.